page_title: History of Sri Lanka
section_title: Colonial Sri Lanka (1815–1948)
hierarchical_section_title: History of Sri Lanka / Colonial Sri Lanka (1815–1948)
caption_attribution_description: Illustration
context_page_description: The history of Sri Lanka is intertwined with the history of the broader Indian subcontinent and the surrounding regions, comprising the areas of South Asia, Southeast Asia and Indian Ocean.
  The earliest human remains found on the island of Sri Lanka date to about 125,000 years ago.
  The historical period begins roughly in the 3rd century, based on Pali chronicles like the Mahavamsa, Dipavamsa, and the Culavamsa. They describe the history since the arrival of Sinhalese from Northern India The earliest documents of settlement in the Island are found in these chronicles. These chronicles cover the period since the establishment of the Kingdom of Tambapanni in the 6th century BCE by the earliest ancestors of the Sinhalese. The first Sri Lankan ruler of the Anuradhapura Kingdom, Pandukabhaya, is recorded for the 4th century BCE. Buddhism was introduced in the 3rd century BCE by Arhath Mahinda. The first Tamil ruler of the Anuradhapura Kingdom, Ellalan, an invader, is recorded for the 2nd century BCE.
  The island was divided into numerous kingdoms over the following centuries, intermittently united under Chola rule.
context_section_description: During the Napoleonic Wars, Great Britain, fearing that French control of the Netherlands might deliver Sri Lanka to the French, occupied the coastal areas of the island (which they called Ceylon) with little difficulty in 1796. In 1802, the Treaty of Amiens formally ceded the Dutch part of the island to Britain and it became a crown colony. In 1803, the British invaded the Kingdom of Kandy in the first Kandyan War, but were repulsed. In 1815 Kandy was occupied in the second Kandyan War, finally ending Sri Lankan independence.
  Following the suppression of the Uva Rebellion the Kandyan peasantry were stripped of their lands by the Crown Lands (Encroachments) Ordinance No. 12 of 1840 (sometimes called the Crown Lands Ordinance or the Waste Lands Ordinance), a modern enclosure movement, and reduced to penury. The British found that the uplands of Sri Lanka were very suitable for coffee, tea and rubber cultivation. By the mid-19th century, Ceylon tea had become a staple of the British market bringing great wealth to a small number of white tea planters. The planters imported large numbers of Tamil workers as indentured labourers from south India to work the estates, who soon made up 10% of the island's population. These workers had to work in slave-like conditions living in line rooms, not very different from cattle sheds.
  The British colonialists favoured the semi-European Burghers, certain high-caste Sinhalese and the Tamils who were mainly concentrated to the north of the country. Nevertheless, the British also introduced democratic elements to Sri Lanka for the first time in its history and the Burghers were given degree of self-government as early as 1833. It was not until 1909 that constitutional development began, with a partly elected assembly, and not until 1920 that elected members outnumbered official appointees. Universal suffrage was introduced in 1931 over the protests of the Sinhalese, Tamil and Burgher elite who objected to the common people being allowed to vote.
caption: On the top: illustration from Delineatio characterum quorundam incognitorum, quos in insula Ceylano spectandos praebet tumulus quidam sepulchralis published in Acta Eruditorum, 1733
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